


rich in love

by vegashoods



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-22
Updated: 2018-02-22
Packaged: 2019-03-22 09:20:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13761048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vegashoods/pseuds/vegashoods
Summary: Adam Parrish grew up poor, but maybe money isn't everything.Maybe Ronan Lynch is.{or: the one where Adam realizes what truly matters in life}





	rich in love

Adam Parrish had always been poor.

Growing up, he’d known it; living in a dirty, tiny trailer in the worst part of the worst outskirt of Henrietta made it obvious even to a six-year-old. His bedroom was the size of a walk-in closet, his clothes were always too small or too ripped or too filthy to be considered presentable, and a dilapidated ceiling stretched yellow and sagging over his head at night while he fought for sleep amidst the cicadas and mosquitoes and bees that got into his room through his torn screen window and chirped and screamed and buzzed around his head.

He remembered a time in second grade when his teacher had pulled him aside after class to ask him if he needed anything, if the school could provide him with some new outfits or shoes, because his tennis shoes had worn bottoms and half-shredded toes and he’d been wearing the same jeans for a week. He remembered going home embarrassed, even at that age thinking that taking charity was weakness and knowing that accepting anything would result in a bruised eye or split lip that he would have to miss more school to cover up. As he’d grown older, his bedroom had become even smaller, his clothes remained ill-fitting and grubby, and kids got meaner. By middle school, Adam Parrish was the kid that was slammed into lockers and laughed at as he passed by, a crude and wounding reflection of the life he was already living at home.

Even though he’d known he was poor, Adam had always strived for something greater than he was. At age twelve, his math teacher had told him that he had a lot of potential and that he could make a career as an engineer or a teacher or an economist someday, and Adam had replied simply that he was going to be a mechanic. It wasn’t his choice, but he was accustomed to not having a choice, and he knew where his place on the food chain was. But still, he dreamed about climbing to the top, sometimes. What it would be like to stand above all the kids with their snide comments and poorly hidden eye rolls and “God, Parrish, quit being such a bitch. Does your dad beat you or something?”

He didn’t make any friends except Wes in eighth grade, who bought him pizza with his father’s money and then told Adam that he owed him. Adam couldn’t tell him that soda and pizza for two people was well outside his budget and his dad might kill him if he asked for it. It turned out that Wes was only pitying him, anyway, which was worse than not having any friends at all, and after that Adam went through school and home and life as a silent shadow, a quiet observer in a world he was stuck in with no light at the end of the tunnel. 

The guidance counselor sought him out sometimes, pulling him out of class so the other kids could see it and gossip about  _ what the fuck was wrong with Adam Parrish, anyway _ . Rumors circulated that he was in foster care, which he wished was the truth because that meant his parents weren’t permanent, and that he was insane, which was maybe partially the truth, and that his parents didn’t love him, which he’d known was the truth since he was a little boy. He refused to miss school even when the beatings became more violent, more frequent, and he remembered a time when he’d asked his dad to leave the marks somewhere he could cover them up and the next day he’d gone to school with two black eyes and a scratch down the side of his face. 

In health class, his teacher told them about love, and how money couldn’t buy happiness, and how as long as you were rich in love, it didn’t matter how much money you had. Adam thought that was delusional--when you were constantly hungry and unable to sleep on the springs poking out of your mattress and freezing because heat was a luxury you couldn’t afford, it obviously mattered how much money you had--and besides, he’d grown up poor in love, too. Nobody had ever loved him the way a child needs to be loved, and he certainly hadn’t loved himself. He’d grown up alone, and desperate, and poor. 

And then Aglionby.

Suddenly, there it was. The light at the end of the tunnel. He was going to a private school, because he was smart enough to cut down the tuition costs with scholarships and driven enough to pay for the rest. The boys at Aglionby didn’t make fun of his worn clothes, because everyone wore the same thing there; they didn’t comment on the marks on his skin, because they were too polite to pry; they didn’t ask  _ what the fuck was wrong with Adam Parrish, _ because they respected him. They liked him. Even if he still kept his distance, his peers knew he was smart, and they knew he was driven, and they admired him for that. 

Even with Aglionby, though, an empty space still gnawed at his heart and nagged at his mind. There was something missing, some integral piece of the puzzle that was his happiness, but he couldn’t put his finger on exactly what it was until he met Richard Gansey.

Gansey pulled him at least partially out of the shadows. They shouldn’t have been friends--Gansey was all old money and old Camaro and “old sport”--but he didn’t expect any of that from Adam. He accepted him, and he didn’t ask questions, and he supported him even through his insecurities and automatic defenses. For the first time, Adam had a friend, and the empty space wasn’t completely filled, but at least he knew what it was: love. The thing that had always been absent from his life, the thing that he was experiencing whenever he was around Gansey, was love. It seemed like some sort of strange foreign language, one that he couldn’t catch onto quite yet, but with Gansey’s friendship he began to understand it, and hope grew that one day he would know it fully.

_ One day _ was maybe the day he met Ronan Lynch.

_ One day _ was maybe the day he first saw Ronan dream something into life.

_ One day _ was maybe the day Ronan saved him from his father.

_ One day  _ was maybe the day he met Aurora Lynch, or maybe the day he saw how subtly gentle Ronan was with his Orphan Girl, or maybe the day Ronan kissed him.

It was probably the day Ronan kissed him, but he could never quite remember. 

All he knew was that his heart was full from  _ one day _ forward, and he would do anything to keep it that way forever. One meeting, one dream, one kiss, and his life had inexplicably changed for the better. The day he moved in above St. Agnes, a weight lifted from his chest, and he could feel his heart again, and he knew that the warm sensation inside it was what he had been waiting for all those wasted, futile, miserable years. 

It was so worth it.

Two years after graduation, he found himself in a place he’d never imagined he’d be, but at the same time, he couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. He’d moved out of his tiny apartment and moved in with Ronan at the Barns, suddenly granted unlimited access to more space and beauty than he knew what to do with. Ronan dreamed, sometimes, and Adam wandered, sometimes, out in the fields or around and around the house until he had every room memorized, and they slept in the same bed and shared the same aspirations and sort-of raised a sort-of girl named Opal who liked to sleep on the coffee table in the living room. 

It was messy, and it was confusing, and it was something close to perfect.

One night, in a bedroom the size of a bedroom, with a clean white ceiling over their heads and quiet breaths the only sounds in the room, nestled under thick, warm blankets, Adam and Ronan lay awake next to each other. They each had their own reasons for being awake at this hour--Ronan, because he could never sleep, and Adam, because he was distracted--but they didn’t speak to each other for a while. It was an easy silence, the kind that made it simple to sift through thoughts and memories undisturbed. 

Adam was remembering health class, and what his teacher had told them about money and love, and being rich in one mattering more than the other. He’d thought he had forgotten it, but some corner of his mind had dredged it back up, and now he couldn’t stop contemplating it. In that class all those years ago, Adam remembered thinking it was an unrealistic thought, but now he felt like he finally understood it. 

Adam Parrish had always been poor, until Ronan.

He knew that, technically, the money aspect didn’t much affect him anymore; he had a boyfriend who could pull virtually anything he wanted from his dreams at will. But that wasn’t the part that mattered, not anymore, not as much as it had when he was younger, not even as much as it had two years ago.

If he still lived in a trailer today, he thought, with nothing but a tiny room and a broken window and an uncomfortable bed, none of it would matter as long as Ronan was there with him. Adam Parrish was not necessarily rich, but he was rich in love, and as long as that fact remained true, he was going to be all right.

“Ronan?” he said, voice seemingly louder than it was in the almost-darkness of the room. Faint moonlight filtered in through the high windows, casting a pale stripe across Ronan’s dark hair and half-lidded eyes, shifting as Ronan turned to look at him.

“Yeah?”

“You fill my heart.”

There was a short pause, where Ronan thought about this and Adam waited, praying he hadn’t said anything stupid. “Are you drunk?” said Ronan, and sighed. He understood perfectly what Adam meant, even without asking, and he forgot sometimes that he didn’t have to keep up his defensive, sarcastic facade when he was alone with Adam. “You fill mine, too. I love you, Adam.”

The sound of his name had never sounded so  _ right _ before, not even coming from his own mouth. It was like Ronan had invented it, had pulled it from his dreams and gifted it to this simple, strange, damaged boy who he had chosen to love. It was the best feeling in the world.

Adam sighed, content, and moved to lace his fingers with Ronan’s, a tired smile creeping into the corners of his mouth. “I love you, too,” he said. “Forever and always.”


End file.
